by Kate Raney
Linked resource: Building Best Friends: An Exercise in Animated Character Design
Yana Durado & Emily McCarthy
“Character Matters,” Point 5 in the EDIT 10: Best Practices for Inclusive Teaching in Media Production, asks us to teach students to “break away from stale and harmful stereotypes.” It can be a big challenge for students to recognize and resist those tendencies. Animation has an added challenge and, sometimes, a benefit, because it isn’t bound to the limits of reality. This past semester, I applied an intersectional framework to character design and narrative animation. Very briefly, intersectionality looks at how multiple intersecting factors (i.e. race and gender and age) shape human experience, not just a single factor (i.e. race or gender or age). Incorporating intersectionality into animation allows me to address deeper issues of representation and analyze the influence of power on narrative structure.
Zero Jansen & Kellye Blosser
When teaching character design, I ask students to include a list of personality traits with their designs. I stress that the character’s personality influences their physical movement and defines their performance. When evaluating these lists, I found them to be underdeveloped, last minute, or simplistic. I wanted students to emphasize storytelling informed by the character’s personality, and to apply intersectionality to their work. To accomplish this, I needed to rethink how I presented these ideas.
In the book How Learning Works, the authors address how to use practice and feedback to get better student outcomes. I incorporated two methods into my revised assignment to “build in multiple opportunities to practice,” and “incorporate peer feedback.” I developed a small group exercise with a questionnaire to complete before creating their individual characters. This gave them a small scale, low stakes opportunity to explore character design and a clear set of guidelines to consider. Some questions address common animation design issues, while others are meant to align with the tenants of intersectionality.
Iris Edmonson, Nicki Mazzocca, Zulhiczar Tinarbuko
In the exercise, I wanted to discourage simple binaries like good/hero and evil/villain. I also wanted students to consider the intricacies of identity and social interactions. So, I ground the exercise in a familiar relationship, where students could more easily recognize subtle complexities: the best friend.
With the best friend, students could consider their own experiences with people they are close to despite differences. This construct led students to create characters with distinct contrasts. Sometimes this meant age differences, economic backgrounds, ethnicity… With all of these differences though, the students recognized the humor that different world views can provide and the value of friendships across differences.
Cameron Erickson & Dani Wasserman
To get immediate peer feedback, students presented the designs in class. They could then see how wildly different their designs were despite having the same starting point. What details they chose to emphasize completely altered the characters and narrative. This also draws attention to their own decision-making process. As media makers we constantly make decisions. These might be minor like the character’s hair color, or major like whose stories are told. But in every step of the process a decision (or series of them) is being made. So how does a student make their decisions? What questions should a student ask as they make these decisions? With this exercise some questions weren’t relevant to their character, but students had to explain why. This prepares them to think critically about their own process and carry that into future projects.
After doing the exercise in class, students are given the option of using the worksheet as they design their own characters. Some did and some didn’t, but overall, they have been more thoughtful about their character design. My students are consistently emphasizing story and giving more depth to personality. Throughout the semester, they have returned to narrative again and again in project planning and critique.
References:
Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, Marie K. Norman, How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, Jossey-Bass: May 2010.
Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality, Polity: 2016.
(2009) “Teaching Intersectionality Intersectionally,” International Feminist Journal of Politics, 11:4, 566-577, DOI: 10.1080/14616740903237558
“Teaching Intersectionality and Media,” Teaching Media Quarterly, Vol. 6 No. 2, 2018 https://pubs.lib.umn.edu/index.php/tmq/issue/view/102
Kate Raney is an animator, media artist, and lecturer at Ohio University.
